Chapter 6
She could feel him standing up on his hind legs inside the pocket, his tiny foreclaws hooking into the coarse hemp of her apron, pulling himself up toward the seam.
"I took the oath under the Codex, Lord Gideon," Oriana said, her voice small, but utterly clear. "The trial takes place at the Equinox. Not three days before."
Gideon’s eyes turned to cold slate. "Foolish girl."
He raised his hand, gesturing to the massive, armored beast beside him. "Vraal. Step forward. Let the keeper smell what real draconic blood smells like."
The colossal Dread-Wyvern stepped forward.
Its chest expanded, a low, tectonic rumble building in its ribcage—the terrifying pre-flame rattle that preceded an inferno. It lowered its massive, armored head until its yellow, slitted eye was six inches from Oriana's face. The heat radiating from its hide was like standing before an open smelter, the stench of roasted meat and copper washing over her skin.
Oriana’s breath hitched. Every survival instinct screamed at her to drop, to run, to cower.
Then, from the pocket of her apron, a tiny, gray, ridgeless snout poked out into the air.
Pip didn't roar. He couldn't.
He merely drew in a long, rattling breath through his congested left nostril, sniffing the massive predator before him.
He let out a dry, clicking wheeze. A sound that sounded remarkably like an ancient judge clearing his throat before throwing out a frivolous lawsuit.
Ignis-Vraal stopped.
The low rumble in the colossal beast's chest died instantly, choked off mid-vibration.
The Dread-Wyvern's slit pupils, previously narrowed in bloodthirsty focus, dilated until they were completely black. The obsidian scales along its massive neck suddenly flared upright in an involuntary, violent spasm of sheer, unadulterated terror.
The eight-ton war-beast took half a step backward.
Then another.
Its massive claws scraped frantically against the granite, seeking purchase as it tried to put distance between itself and the girl in the hemp apron.
A high, thin whimper escaped the apex predator’s throat—a sound so pitiful, so thoroughly humiliating, that Gideon spun around in sheer shock.
"Vraal?" Gideon barked, reaching for the control rod at his belt. "Forward! *Domina! Ad terram!*"
Ignis-Vraal did not move forward.
The colossal dread-wyvern dropped its belly completely flat against the muck-stained flagstones, tucked its massive, horned head between its front paws, and began to shiver. Not the violent twitching of a beast suffering from a spell-backlash, but the frantic, desperate groveling of a hound that had just realized it was barking at a thunderbolt.
It closed its eyes, whining continuously through its teeth, pressing its snout so deeply into the dirt that the silver plates of its headstall groaned under the strain.
"What is the matter with you?!" Gideon roared, drawing his lead-weighted whip and striking the beast across its armored shoulder. The blow left a bright, sparking scar across the black scales, but Ignis-Vraal refused to rise. It merely curled tighter, whimpering, its massive tail tucked between its hind legs like a beaten pup.
Gideon stared at his war-mount in utter, paralyzed disbelief.
He looked from the groveling titan to Oriana.
Oriana was still standing there, her hands clasped loosely over her apron pocket, where Pip had already retreated back into the wool, uninterested in the commotion.
"What did you do?" Gideon hissed, his face pale, veins standing out like cords against his temples. "What witch-rot have you laid upon this floor?!"
"I didn't do anything, my lord," Oriana said, her voice shaking slightly with her own bewilderment. "It's just clean straw and lye."
Gideon’s hand went white on the hilt of his sabre. For a fraction of a second, she thought he was going to draw the steel and take her head right there in the damp corridor, law or no law.
The air grew thin. Heavy.
The stone beneath their feet seemed to vibrate with a deep, silent hum—not the rattling of the upper pens, but something vast, ancient, and patient, waiting five miles deep in the crust of the earth.
Gideon felt it.
His eyes darted to the ceiling, then to the floor. The hair along his forearms stood on end. The hairline crack on his ancient signet ring seemed to hum with a faint, microscopic vibration that made his knuckles throb with sudden, biting pain.
Slowly, deliberately, Gideon lowered his hand from his sword.
"Three days, drudge," Gideon whispered, his voice trembling with a rage so toxic it turned his lips blue. "Three days. And when you stand in the Sunken Coliseum, there will be no shadows to hide your tricks. The Crown-Rod does not lie. It will burn the filth from this Weyr, and you with it."
He hauled savagely on the lead-reins of the groveling dread-wyvern.
"Get up, you wretched bag of meat! *Up!*"
It took three more strikes of the whip before the eight-ton monster finally scrambled backward, keeping its belly scraped against the floor, refusing to turn its back on the girl until it was thirty yards down the vaulted corridor.
The sound of their chaotic retreat faded into the distant hum of the forge-fires.
Silence returned to Sub-Level Four.
Oriana leaned her back against the wooden gate of Stall Forty-Four, sliding slowly down until her knees were pulled against her chest.
"He's going to kill us, Pip," she whispered into the empty corridor, resting her forehead against her knees. "He's truly going to kill us both. The Crown-Rod has never failed. It's the bone of the First Wyrm. If you don't possess the royal fire, it turns you to cinder in three seconds."
From the depths of her apron, two small, blunt forepaws emerged, resting on her wrist.
Pip pulled his head out.
He didn't look afraid. He didn't look like an invalid.
He reached out, his soft, leathery tongue licking away the cold sweat that had gathered at the base of her thumb.
Then, he leaned his chin against her palm.
The warmth returned—not the sharp, desperate clarity of the sick-ward, but something deeper, richer. A slow, comforting resonance that felt like a hand resting gently upon her shoulder, telling her that the sky was large, that men with whips were small, and that stone remembered everything that was ever carved into its flesh.
Oriana cupped the little creature close against her neck, breathing in the scent of dried chamomile, old parchment, and an ancient, waking fire.
"Tomorrow is the thirtieth dawn," she murmured against his gray, ridgeless scales. "Don't you dare sneeze during the opening trumpets."
Pip closed his milky eyes and let out a long, bubbling wheeze, perfectly content in the dark.
The dawn did not break gently over Mount Ignis. It arrived like an iron hammer struck against a bronze gong.
From the highest battlements of the High Imperial Weyr, twelve twin-horned brass trumpets sounded the call to the Equinox. The vibration was so violent it shook loose three centuries of soot from the ventilation shafts, raining black flakes down into the deepest holding pens of the subterranean mews.
Oriana stood in the center of Stall Forty-Four, tying the braided hemp belt of her clean keeper’s smock.
Her hands were steady. She had spent the last two hours expecting them to shake, waiting for the terror to turn her knees to tallow, but an eerie, cool stillness had settled into her chest instead. It was the calm of someone who had walked to the edge of the sea and discovered there were no ships, no shallows, and no turning back.
